‘The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour’: Remembering the Humor, the Controversy and How It Changed TV

At that time, it would take two weeks for the ratings books to come in and for the network to know whether or not a show was working. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour debuted in January of 1967 and was already into taping its third episode when the ratings for the first two came in. “That’s when they found out, ‘Oh, people are watching,’” David laughs. “Then a couple of more ratings books came in and they found themselves to be a Top 10 program. Bonanza was also a Top 10 program, but sometimes The Smothers Brothers would get higher ratings. They couldn’t dethrone Bonanza, but they brought in a whole new audience of young people.

“After about three ratings books,” he continues, “they began to realize, ‘Hey, we’ve got some clout here. Let’s do more of what we want.’ And they started doing it, because they designed the initial shows just to appeal to as many people as possible. That’s why you had Simon and Garfunkel on the same show as Kate Smith. Somebody old show business and somebody new show business, and they didn’t just appear in different segments like on The Ed Sullivan Show. They put them in sketches together and just capitalized on the idea. One show had Mickey Rooney and Bette Davis, so there was some diversity there for an hour show.”

Emphasizing that he’s not a complete geek, and that much of this information is fresh because he teaches a course on TV of the ’60s and ’70s, David details, “I think it was the 10^th show of the first season where they did a long sketch called ‘Billy the Kid’s Birthday.’ Tom played Billy the Kid and everybody else were the outlaws. Janet Leigh was a guest star and she was Belle Starr. Simon and Garfunkel played the troubadours that sang about these outlaws. It started like a regular shoot ‘em up Western where they gave him his birthday cake, but then got into a fight and decided they were going to kill him. Dick Smothers then says, ‘Wait a minute! Maybe fighting’s not the answer. Maybe love is the answer.’ And Tom decides he wants to go off with Jane Leigh. Well, you can’t do that on TV. You can’t make love on TV, You can kill on TV, but you can’t make love. So one of the Outlaws says that doesn’t seem right and kills him. Then it goes back to the troubadours who say, ‘Sometimes you want to say something when people don’t expect you to say something.’

“It was just the weirdest bit of television I think I’d ever seen up to that point,” he elaborates. “I was 15 or 16 and it was TV talking about itself and making you question what was acceptable on TV and not acceptable. From that show on, they just started doing more and more stuff. They were making fun of the president, they were making fun of the Vietnam War. They were bringing on all these new rock acts. They were just all over the place, doing blackout sketches about racism. And then one of their supporting players, Pat Paulson, ran for president. Just brilliant.”

So with “Billy the Kid’s Birthday,” the envelope was decidedly pushed. The question, naturally, became, what would be next. The answer came in the form of writer/performer Elaine May, who, along with Tommy, played a pair of censors looking at a movie with different things playing out on the screen before them. The audience never saw what they were watching, only their reactions, but CBS wouldn’t let the sketch on.

“In response,” explains David, “Tommy flew to New York and this was the first time an entertainer went to a serious newspaper to complain about censorship in terms of content. The press loved it and ran with it. So automatically it was ‘CBS vs. The Smothers Brothers,’ and it got worse and worse, because the network didn’t want any viewers to know that there were censors much less that CBS was employing them. But every time Tom felt wronged, he went to the papers. This was the height of the ’60s. CBS was like the very stern parents and Tom and Dick were the rebellious teenagers. Just a lot of butting heads.

“Tom really was young enough to think, ‘I’m right and I’ll win this.’ That didn’t quite happen. Over the course of a number of episodes through all three seasons, you get a pretty quick sample of their maturation and their development through it all. But by the start of the third season, they were singing about being censored and they brought on Peter Seeger as a singer, but CBS censored what he wanted to sing. So, they went back the press and within the same season were able to bring him back on and he was able to sing it. And it was shown on CBS. So they won some fights, but lost others.”

But why, one has to wonder, was CBS willing to put up with it, especially since it didn’t stay a ratings dynamo? David suggests, “The more political they got, the more they alienated some of the older audience. By the third season, they were not ranking in the Top 10 anymore; more like the Top 25. But still a very popular show and one that at any other point would have stayed on. As a matter of fact, they had been renewed for a fourth season, but CBS fired them. One of the things that happened is that David Steinberg came on and had done a sketch where he played a man of the cloth giving a sermon that got more negative mail than anything had gotten in the history of broadcasting.

“CBS,” he continues the scenario, “told the Smothers Brothers that they couldn’t have him back on and if he did, absolutely no more sermons. The short version is they invite him back very quickly, they do a run through with the censors there. There’s no sermon there; they’re just doing the show. And then after the run-through, David Steinberg says to Tommy, ‘You know, I sort of expected another sermon.’ Tommy said, ‘Would you like to do it?’ David Steinberg is an improv comic, so he said, ‘Okay, let’s do one.’ When they taped the show the next day they included it, but it never got televised. That whole episode never got televised and that was it. It was like breaking curfew for the last time. It just wasn’t worth the hassle anymore. On top of that, these CBS executives, the ad executives, the programming executives would go to upstate New York to their country clubs and all their wealthy, conservative Republican friends would say, ‘Why are you letting those boys do that?’ So it got to be a thing and that was it for The Smothers Brothers.”

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour ended its run in 1969, but David is convinced that it’s spirit lived on in the form of NBC’s Saturday Night Live, which made its debut in 1975. “And Lorne Michaels is still there as a very strong arbiter of public tastes,” he says. “He chooses the guest host and musical guest and all of the people that have come from Saturday Night Live over the decades. If the Smothers Brothers had not been fired by CBS, in just a few years their show could have become as powerful. In just a few years they were creating stars. And when people watch episodes on getTV, they’re going to see how many musical superstars came out of that show.

“The Doors was there, doing things the band never did anywhere else,” David adds. “Jefferson Airplane did the first psychedelic background with the colored oils being dropped at the same time. So if they hadn’t been fired, the show would have been dealing with Woodstock and Watergate, and they would have had musicians like James Taylor and Elton John. On The Smothers Brothers, Gorge Harrison came on unannounced just to support them and what they were doing. The Beatles in 1968 weren’t touring anymore, so they came out with videos for ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Revolution’ and they only had it broadcast on David Frost in the UK and The Smothers Brothers in the States.”

Despite what happened between them and CBS, David believes that The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour had an absolute impact on the television medium, and a significant one at that. “Without them,” he reflects, “you don’t have Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, which followed them by about six months and eclipsed them in terms of popularity. You don’t have, like I said, Saturday Night Live and the kind of humor they did. There are straight lines from them to Jon Stewart to Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher. You might not have any of those in the same way. If you watch the programs themselves as we now can, most of what they do after 50-plus years will seem tame. But at the time, no one discussed politics in a comedy show. Certainly nobody talked against war or made jokes about drugs in a comedy show before they did. They got there first.”

Watch episodes of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour each Saturday night on getTV.